Catching Up

Met with a good friend and past colleague this week and it was good catching up. Robert Pease worked for me for a brief time in the heady days of the Internet boom. He has subsequently gone on to a successful career in software product management in Seattle. We caught up on several topics, and the discussion jarred my memory on several well discussed topics.....here's a brief list with some reflections.

Software industry -- There are MANY small software companies that really never make it mainly due to their hopes being dashed on the rocks of enterprise sales. Even for established companies, selling to the enterprise is not easy, takes a very long time and mostly is not possible if your name is not IBM, Microsoft or _______.

Success -- As as software entrepreneur you are never really out of the woods. Raising money does not equal creating value. Creating value (ie making REAL money) is sustained success.

"Small business" is really about $30M in revenue which is NOT a small business as it relates to MOST small business in the US. It is impossible, nearly, to apply technology to a small business (revenues less than $5M). I would love to have a work flow solution, VOIP (real VOIP), SharePoint, Exchange, etc. These technologies could make a huge impact on our bottom line. Cant' afford them! We are a Google Aps company and love it, but we need more to compete.

More on these and others later.